of Evora, where they were imprisoned, Vasco Martins de Mello, refused to obey, and the future saviour of Portugal escaped. The wonder is that the Portuguese people submitted so long as they did to this tyranny, and it shows how deeply they felt the debt due to their great monarchs, such as Affonso Henriques and Dom Diniz, that they made no attempt to overthrow their unworthy descendant. So strong was their attachment to the hereditary principle, that at a great Cortes held at Leiria in 1376, the queen’s only surviving child, the Donna Beatrice, was recognized as heiress to the throne. This declaration was of the greatest importance, for it governed the future rule of succession in the kingdom; and by declaring females able to succeed rejected the well-known Salic law, which prevailed in France and other countries. The queen steadily encouraged the king’s ambition to sit upon the throne of Castile, and when his hopes revived, on the death of Henry II., she persuaded him once more to send her lover, the Count of Ourem, as ambassador to England. Richard II. received him cordially, and Edmund, Earl of Cambridge, next brother to John of Gaunt, and better known by his subsequent title of Duke of York, agreed to bring military assistance to the aid of Ferdinand. In 1381, the Earl of Cambridge arrived accordingly with two thousand English men-at-arms, and, as had been suggested by the Count of Ourem, his eldest son, Edward, afterwards second Duke of York, was solemnly betrothed to the Donna Beatrice, the heiress to the throne of Portugal. The feeble Ferdinand, as usual, refused to keep faith, and terrified by the approach of a Castilian army, he deserted the English, who immediately began to ravage the country round their camp near Oporto, while he made peace with John I. of Castile at Salvaterra. By this treaty, which was signed on April 2, 1383, and in which the hand of Donna Leonor is clearly to be perceived, it was arranged that John I. should marry Donna Beatrice, who was but eleven years old, and that Leonor should be Regent of Portugal if Ferdinand died, until Beatrice’s eldest son came of age. At the wedding, which took place at once, Ferdinand was too ill to be present: but the queen and her lover were there in his stead, and behaved with such unseemly hilarity that many of the Portuguese nobility, headed by Nuno Alvares Pereira, who was to be known in Portuguese history as “The Holy Constable,” could not refrain from openly expressing their disgust. Six months afterwards, on October 22, 1383, King Ferdinand died, and Donna Leonor assumed the regency in the name of her little daughter, the Queen of Castile. [Illustration: VIEW OF THE PALACE AT LISBON. (_From “Les Royaumes d’Espagne et Portugal.” La Haye, 1720._)]